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Lady Gaga will no doubt have the support of her army of Little Monsters no matter what she does. However, critics' receptions around the web were lukewarm at best to her long-awaited "multimedia project" ARTPOP. I've compiled a few choice quotes below:
It's as if Gaga's afraid that she complemented her "pop" with so much "art" that she needs to overtly shout, "You see what I was going for there?" Whether it's the blatant "hey, gays, this one's for you!" on "Donatella" or the way she feels the need to spell out what the acronym "G.U.Y." stands for ("girl under you") in the title of the overly complicated track. In fact, "G.U.Y." is just one of the cacophonous, Frankenstein-like songs she's built on ARTPOP, on which a catchy hook is drowned out by the whirring bee's nest production surrounding it. "Aura" and "Venus" fall to the same fate: booming, earworm choruses interrupted by a clunky hodgepodge of stuttering verses and blandly complex atmospherics.
At her peak, her mishmash of European dance music, American pop, '80s Madonna, glam Bowie, hair metal, Giorgio Moroder, and The Killers sounded both reverently referential and ahead of its time. The hype that combination commands is always followed by the expectation of further exploration. Instead, Gaga has added only a few by-the-numbers modern elements to that initial formula: some Skrillex-lite dubstep on the awkward "Swine", a Brandon Flowers imitation on "Gypsy", and the aforementioned rap-ready "Jewels N' Drugs". That refusal to experiment as wildly as she once did reads as fear, and a pop star who's afraid ends up sounding like the once-weird Lady Gaga does on ARTPOP: boring and normal.
Don't underestimate Lady Gaga: Though "Gypsy" might do sincere Bruce Springsteen-style rock more effectively than the Boss himself has lately, it turns out that authenticity is just another pose.
"My artpop could mean anything," she sings at one point, no more willing than ever to align herself with a single viewpoint. It's a mind-set borne out by the rest of the album's shifts in tone and perspective -- which doesn't mean she's equally convincing in all her guises.
It's a (nearly) nonstop disco blast, with beats that pound, synths that dart and vocals that fire like a blowtorch. Of course, Lady Gaga has never done things in a small, or God forbid, subtle, way.
The great tragedy of ARTPOP, though, comes from those moments that sound not just flat, but deflated - for example, the eminently skippable one-two punch of the boastful "Donatella" (which is like "Supermodel" with the wit sucked out) and the will.i.am-produced "Fashion!," which repurposes the glossy blue-eyed soul of Scritti Politti but waters it down so Gaga can shout about wearing Louboutins (which seem sort of basic for someone so consistently outlandish), while owning the world.
Naming an album ARTPOP implies a certain drama-club-kid flair, a willingness to take one's devotion to the pop ideal as seriously as a cocaine-induced heart attack. "I just love the music, not the bling," Gaga protests on the title track - a claim that seems a bit disingenuous, given the narrative arc of her career up to this point. If anything, her primary message since she shed the Stefani Germanotta stage persona has been something like "Fame is a thing that is important in 21st-century society." Not the deepest statement, but also not that unique to the new millennium, as evidenced by the ad hoc cohort she's assembled in the run-up to this album's release: The steely-eyed Abramović, the pop fantasist Jeff Koons, and the perpetually icky Terry Richardson have all prioritized the artist (i.e., themselves) over the art.
Lady Gaga's latest extravagant exploration of her own fame, fabulousness and fearlessness is undeniably relentless, but that doesn't mean it's consistently entertaining.
(I guess that logo design didn't sway the folks at Gannett.)
Overall, you get the feeling that R. Kelly collab "Do What U Want" is the standout of the album (which, of course. It's R. Kelly) and tracks like "Donnatella" and "Fashion!" should have been left on the cutting room floor in service of a tighter, more enjoyable ARTPOP EP.
What do you think? Have critics missed the mark with Gaga's latest?
Sound off in the comments.
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